Every year, former U.S. President Barack O’Bama shares his reading and music recommendations. 2026’s summer reading list features a range of titles in fiction and non-fiction exploring relationships, life, the mind, American history, and more.
//
Kin by Tayari Jones
This New York Times bestseller from the author of an American Marriage that explores the deep friendship between two Black girls, Vernice and Annie, living in the American South 1950s. A yearning for their missing mothers, tears to two apart but a devastating tragedy will push them back together.
Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout, The Things We Never Say is the 2026 Booker Prize Longlisted novel about love, loneliness and new beginnings. Artie Dam, a man who despite his seemingly busy life of teaching, holiday parties with his wife, and weekends spent taking his sailboat around the beautiful Massachusetts Bay, is faced with a deep feeling of isolation. When life reveals that it has been keeping a secret from Artie, he is forced to reconsider all his relationships and life choices.
A World Appears by Michael Pollan
From the best-selling author of How to Change Your Mind, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness is a non-fiction world that delves into one of life’s biggest mysteries, our conscience. Feelings, thoughts, experiences, all shape our view on the world but how and why has it come to be?
Whistler by Ann Patchett
From an internationally bestselling and prize-winning author, Whistler is an intimate portrait of family, memory and love. When Daphne notices an older gentleman following her around the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, she discovers its Eddie, her former Step-father. She hasn’t seen him for many years, since his short marriage to her mother when she was nine. As they rebuild their relationship, the time falls away to showcase the profound impact that early connection had on both of them.
This Land in Your Land by Beverly Gage
This Land Is Your Land: On a Road Trip to Make Sense of America is an exploration of America on the brink of celebrating its 250th birthday in a world increasingly divided. award-winning historian Beverly Gage takes readers on a journey through U.S history and culture, painting a picture that highlights both its messy contradictions and the places of pride.
Vigil by George Saunders
From the Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders’ Vigil centres Jill ‘Doll’ Blaine a chaperone into the afterlife. Her 343rd charge is a man unlike all the others. As death approaches for powerful oil tycoon K.J. Boone, he will be visited by a cast of worldly and otherworldly guests, many seeking reckoning.
One Sun Only by Camille Bordas
A collection of stories, this new writing promises to offer an insight into our shared, flawed humanity.
Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent Yu
A darkly comic and moving début novel by Vincent Yu, in an ordinary town, everyone’s phone pings with the same emergency alert. In the face of emergency, the cast of flawed characters have a choice, do they opt for grace and mercy or hold on to hate? Seventeen minutes later they learn it was a false alarm, and the question changes. Can they forgive what has been said and done, when the world doesn’t actually end?
Data Empire by Roopika Risam
Data Empire: How Information Shaped Human History is another non-fiction pick, exploring how algorithms shape our futures and the world around us.
Transcription by Ben Lerner
In this novella, a writer returns to his college town to conduct the final interview with his ninety-year-old mentor. But, when he drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he is left without a recording device in this tale that explores how technologies can enrich or obliterate our memories.
Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead
Written by the two-time Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine is set in 1980s New York, a city beginning to emerge from financial ruin. Successful business owner and master fence, Ray Carney, will gamble it all in one final heist, in the name of love when his beloved wife has the loan for her new travel agency denied.
Barack Obama’s Summer Reading List 2026
Six Recommended Reads: Greek mythology
Black-authored book sales decline, so here are some new books you should add to your reading list
A queer summer: LGBTQ+ reads to enjoy in the sun
Books to read after watching Tip Toe’s devasting finale
